We had a wonderful weekend, we went to church on Saturday, cooked a big family dinner on Sunday, and just spent the rest of the weekend resting, and enjoying our time together.

The kids loved their Easter baskets, and kept hiding their easter eggs all over the house over and over again with their cousins. I am still finding eggs everywhere. But thats part of the experience, right? Stepping on plastic eggs, trying to hide all the chocolate from your two year old. He is extremely energetic, and I didn't want him wound up even more. But it was unavoidable, his face covered in chocolate and dirty little hand prints everywhere happened more then once.

I had a moment this weekend. I looked at all of my kids individually and couldn't believe they were mine. They were all once tiny little babies and now are so big. Each child is so different and has their own little personality and I wouldn't change anything about them. I love being their mama, I love being the one they run to when they have something they want to share, the one who makes holidays special for them, the one who kisses their boo boos away. I am not saying that motherhood is a field of flowers, but the good moments heavily outweigh the bad moments.

I pray that God blesses my children and I am excited to see what He has in store for them.

Oh, I went out of my comfort zone, and made lamb for dinner on Sunday. I have not made lamb before, I personally don't like it. I am not a huge meat eater, which is why I made a whole bunch of sides and veggies. The thing is, it actually turned out pretty good. Which just goes to show that anyone can follow a recipe :)

Here are some photos from our weekend, we had a great time and made lots of memories.

I saw this salad on my instagram's friend @venera_cher, and I just had to ask her for the recipe. She said that the recipe has been in her family for 80 years, from her great grandmother in Belarus.
I made it right away, and we love it. It is delicious, crisp and fresh. I love that it keeps in the fridge for days.

-Cut the cabbage into small chunks. Peel, half and slice beets. Slice all of the garlic cloves.
-In a medium sized pot, bring water, vinegar, sugar, salt, veg oil, peppercorns and bay leaves to a boil.
-In a large bowl, layer 1/3 of the cut cabbage, followed with 1/3 of the beets and 1/3 of the garlic. repeat again until all of the vegetables are used.
-Pour boiled marinade over the cabbage. Weigh the cabbage down into the liquid with a heavy plate in the bowl. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours before eating.
-The longer you refrigerate it, the pinker the cabbage will turn. I think it is perfect 48 hours after making.
-You can serve as a side dish, I use a slotted spoon to scoop up all of the cabbage/beets.
-Transfer the cabbage into a large glass jar filled with the liquid. Refridergate up to 2 weeks

I decided to make a spring themed cake for the family, and what better cake then a delicious coconut cake. I used shaved chocolate and toasted coconut for a birds nestled with some cadbury eggs. The kids thought it was the best thing ever. Print recipe

6) Combine the flour mixture with the liquid ingredients. Stir until combined. Fold in the egg whites, gently stir until combined.

7) Divide batter among prepared pans. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool in pans on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then invert onto racks to cool completely.

8) Place one layer on a cake plate and frost top with 1 cupCoconut Buttercream. Repeat two more times. Frost sides with remaining Coconut Buttercream.

9) optional: Arrange chocolate shavings and toasted coconut into a nest and nestle with egg candy.

coconut frosting-

Ingredients:

1 c. unsalted butter (room temperature)

1/2 c. cream of coconut

6 c. powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

pinch of salt

gel food coloring

Directions

1)Beat butter and cream of coconut with an electric mixture on medium speed until smooth, 1 to 2 minutes.

2)Gradually beat in sugar.

3)Beat in pure vanilla extract and a pinch of kosher salt until combined.

4) optional ** Beat in blue gel food coloring, one drop at a time, to desired color.

Can you believe that it is nearly the end of the month?! This month has been a blur, we were sick with the flu for 3 weeks, so the days seemed to all blur together and I was in survival mode most of the time. However, we are all so much better and all have recovered. I feel like a brand new person and am happy to get back to my "mommy tasks".

One of the things I wanted to do was "springify" (Is that even a word? LOL, my spellcheck certainly doesn't think so) my house and get the easter baskets done for the kids. Well atleast one of those tasks is done, I am still working on my house :)

I tried to stay away from too much candy, since we still have valentines day candy hanging around the house from our party. Instead, I included some of their current favorite toys, bubbles, books and off course a hollow easter bunnies.

Rather then buying the "typical" easter baskets which will later end up in the trash, I chose these simple straw baskets at Michael's. I think they will be great to pick our vegetables in our garden this summer. See how practical I am :)

I can't wait to surprise the kids with the baskets.

-for my 2 year old-

-for my 5 year old-

-for my 8 year old-

Do you have any easter basket traditions? Share a link to your easter baskets, I would love to see them.

These scones are perfect! They are moist and full of flavor. I don't know if you know if you know this, but scones are incredibly easy to make, like super easy. If you don't have a food processor to cut the butter, then just freeze your butter and grate it with your cheese grater. You can whip these up in 30 minutes and have fresh scones for breakfast or an afternoon tea.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.

In a food processor, pulse the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and poppy seeds. Add the lemon zest and pulse again. Add the cold cubed butter and pulse until the butter is pea sized. Dump the flour mixture into a medium sized bowl.

In a small bowl or glass measuring cup, whisk the cream, egg, and vanilla together. Drizzle it over the flour mixture and then toss the mixture together with a rubber spatula until everything appears moistened. Slowly and gently fold in the strawberries. Try your best to not overwork the dough at any point. Work the dough into a ball and transfer to the prepared baking pan. Press into a neat 8″ disc and cut into equal wedges with a knife. Top with a sprinkle of coarse sugar.

Bake for 25 minutes or until lightly golden and cooked through. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes. While the scones are cooling, whisk together the glaze ingredients until smooth. Drizzle over warm scones.

I came across the spring bunting Shanty 2 Chic created, They are free printables, which you can print out to spell what ever you want. Well, I went ahead and spelled out Happy Spring and printed the letters 60% so they all could fit on my fire place.

I then cut, and glued them on some brown kraft paper and strung it with some twine. It took me about 10 minutes and it didn't cost me anything. Don't you just love projects like that? :)

Spring is finally here! It seems like it was a long and wet winter here in the NW, and I am sure we are due for a lot more rain. But the weather is turning warmer, buds are sprouting and flowers are blooming and everything is turning green.

We went to one of my favorite parks with the family. My mom used to bring my sisters and me here when we were kids, this place brings back a lot of memories. Watching my kids play on the same playground that I used to play on 20 years ago is bittersweet. It reminds me how fast the time goes by. Maybe one day they will bring their children here.

It was nice to get out of the house, the kids have been sick all week long, and the fresh air is just what we needed.

Last week I was horribly sick, although I feel much better now (aside from a little cough) My kids are now sick, so it's has been a hard few days. I haven't gotten much sleep and the house was not deep cleaned in a week, which drives me crazy. Well last night, as my hubby put the kids to bed, I decided to clean the house. I always deep clean my house on Thursday afternoons, and its always such a dreaded long task because my toddler is constantly getting into everything.
I forgot how easy it is to clean up without little kids underfoot. It took me about 40 minutes and I was done! I am thinking that cleaning the house after the kids bedtime will be my new thing.

Waking up to a clean house just makes a huge difference. I lit some candles, and the dreary rain outside didn't even bother me anymore. Well, kinda. I still want some sun.

After the breakfast dishes were put away, the kids were settled on the sofa with books and iPads, I decided that I would make a pie, it is the perfect comfort dessert, and it turns out that it is Pi Day today. I used my usual recipe, which you can find here.

What is it about a pie in the oven? The smell, the anticipation - Yum! I really want a second slice now. Okay, I am going to go have that second slice now.

I love getting together with friends, and right now that is a little hard to do. It is cold and wet outside, so parks are out of the picture. I can not wait until summer time, we can go on bike rides, picnics, the zoo and so on

Right now, our get togethers have to be somewhere indoors and safe for little babies and toddlers. So I hosted a brunch/play date at my house. It was during school hours, so our older kidos were in school, but that still left 5 toddlers/babies :)

I had a great time catching up with my friends, and the kids loved playing together. In fact, Nico said that he really likes one friend so much that he was going to marry her when he grew up. :) Ha ha !
I asked him what he liked about her and he said that she played everything he wanted to play.

When I was a kid, I wished that I was older and that time would go by faster, Now I wish it would slow down. The days go by so fast, which turn into weeks, months and years. I still can not believe that our 11 year anniversary was today.

We were 18 and 19 when we got married, basically teenagers in love. Nothing was impossible for us. We knew that we were meant to be, We knew that God would bless our marriage, we trusted him completely and He has not failed us, we love each other even more now then we did back then.

I still remember that it was raining every day for a whole week before the wedding (not unusual for Portland) yet, I was confident that it would be sunny on our wedding day. My husband (then fiancé) asked me if I was worried about it raining on our wedding day, and I assured him that it would not. He asked me how I could be so sure, I told him that I asked God to bless our wedding day, including stopping the rain. I had complete trust in him, I knew he would bless our union and that it would not rain. And guess what? It didn't! It was the most beautiful spring day I could remember.

Before the ceremony, 11 years ago, we went to a botanical garden to take our wedding pictures, Everything was blooming, I was amazed at the beauty all around us. Well after breakfast, we decided to take the kids to the same garden. It felt amazing walking through the same paths 11 years later with our three kids. We ended the day with a romantic dinner out, just me and my man. It felt so good to go out on a date again, we got to enjoy our dinner in peace and not worry if the kids are making to much noise. It was a perfect day, and I my heart is overflowing with gratitude.